Language Lesson
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Sikozu watched John Crichton as he worked. The long muscles in his arms bunched and relaxed with his movements, a fascinating display for all that the man himself was by far her inferior.


**Language Lesson**

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 1,009

Setting: early season 4

Disclaimer: Farscape belongs to many people who aren't me, chief among them the Jim Henson Company. I'm making no profit from this, nor am I attempting to. Please don't sue.

Author's note: this fic is for voleuse, who requested John and Sikozu friendship. Thank you to weissman and kazbaby for the beta.

------------------------------------------

Sikozu watched John Crichton as he worked. The long muscles in his arms bunched and relaxed with his movements, a fascinating display for all that the man himself was by far her inferior.

"Hand me that spanner, would you…?" The console under which Crichton worked, attempting to reconnect wiring that had fallen apart with age, muffled his disembodied voice.

_You might not want to come with us. We are _not _the best traveling companions…_

The words he had used with her two solar days earlier, still alien and hard to wrap her tongue around but getting easier by the day, were so very true. She i_didn't/i_ want to go with them, but she had little choice. And they certainly weren't good traveling companions, let alone the _best_. Of them all, Crichton was the only one who was at least tolerable. Even the old Pilot was difficult to hold a conversation with, since she fell asleep every few hundred microts, it seemed, sometimes in mid-sentence.

"Sputnik?" There was a sharp sound as Crichton snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Ground control to Sputnik, come in, Sputnik." She refocused on the here-and-now. The human was no longer beneath the console, but rather right in front of her, reaching around her for the tool he had requested, close enough that she could smell his distinctive and not entirely unpleasant scent. "You here to give me a hand or just supervise?"

_Give him a hand..._ She frowned and rubbed at her wrist, an unconscious gesture. The skin where her hand had been reattached felt rough; the scar would remain for at least a few more days, although she felt there was no longer a risk of it being pulled off. Sikozu shuddered at the memory.

Crichton laughed and she experienced a flush of irritation, quickly quelled when she realized that he wasn't laughing at her. Well, perhaps he was, but there was no derision in the sound, only amusement as he explained, "Sorry, Sikozu. 'Giving someone a hand' is just an expression. It means helping someone."

"Oh. I didn't believe that you meant it _literally_…"

Tool in hand, he dropped again to the deck and returned to his work beneath the console. Curious, Sikozu squatted beside him to watch him more closely as he buried both hands in a tangle of red and black and white wires and the clear strands of fiberoptic cables. "What is it that you're doing, Crichton?"

"Elack and his Pilot didn't have much need of navigational control, once they hit the Burial Space, so they let the system deteriorate." His voice jerked in tune with his movements as he tightened connections. "Now that they've decided to take us to Arnessk— Agh!" He dropped the spanner and pulled himself rapidly out from under the console, banging his head on its underside. The acrid odor of ozone and burned plastic and hair accompanied him. "Dammit!" He sat up, shook one hand furiously, then sucked at the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger.

"Does that truly help?" Sikozu couldn't suppress the small smile that played about her lips.

Crichton glared at her. "Glad to see I'm so entertaining."

She reached out and took his hand, studied the reddened area that he had sucked at a microt ago, the skin still damp. Bringing his hand closer to her eyes, she saw a small patch of skin on the back where the fine hairs had been burned away as well as a jagged tear in the webbing between digits. She touched a curious finger to the tear. Would it feel as rough as the healing scar at her wrist?

He shifted and again brought her back to herself. Sikozu tilted her head to look at Crichton, who leaned back on his uninjured hand. He nodded toward the hand she still held – his skin was startlingly warm. "Over tightened the wrong screw."

She frowned. "Screw?" He had used the word several times in her hearing, but it made no sense in regard to repairs of a navigational system.

"Kinda like a nail, only it has threads that help it to fasten things more securely."

Complete confusion. "But I thought a 'screw' was when a male and a fe—"

Crichton's laughter cut her off. "Whoa, hey, yeah, about that." He pulled his hand from hers and she saw that the skin of his face was as red as the damaged portion of his hand. "That would be another figure of speech."

She shot him a dubious look. "Figure of speech?"

He stood and brushed bits of wire and dust from his leathers, looking like he was about to bolt. "A screw is a fastener, holds things together. To be screwed is, well… I guess the U.T. equivalent would be frelled."

"Oh." That made much more sense in regard to his earlier usage of the term. "Now I understand. Thank you." She continued to watch him as he gathered up the tools and supplies he had used. He didn't look at her and his face was still red, she was amused to note, embarrassed, although she had no idea why. "Are you finished with your repairs?"

"Uh, no, actually, but I need a little break." He placed everything into a small box under the console to await his return. "Be back in a few."

Sikozu watched him walk away, so like the Peacekeepers in appearance and yet so unlike them in attitude and action. She would have named him Sebacean, if not Peacekeeper, on their first meeting, but he claimed the differences between himself and the PKs, as he called them, were because he was human. She suspected that those differences were more Crichton than they were human versus Sebacean.

With a shrug and a last look at the box of tools, at the wires dangling from beneath the console, Sikozu walked slowly from the room, lost in thought.

Perhaps she would find something she could use to get her life back on track once they reached Arnessk…


End file.
